146 Forty Seasons of Excavation: Nokalakevi

This article has been published by the Georgian National Museum in Iberia-Colchis, available online at http://dspace.nplg.gov.ge/bitstream/1234/242318/1/Iberia_Kolxeti_2017_N13.pdf. Copyright © 2017, Georgian National Museum. Paul Everill, Davit Lomitashvili, Nikoloz Murgulia, Ian Colvin, Besik Lortkipanidze FORTY SEASONS OF EXCAVATION: NOKALAKEVI-TSIKHEGOJI-ARCHAEOPOLIS Abstract. The ruins in the small village of Nokalakevi in Samegrelo, west Georgia, have attracted schol- arly interest since the first half of the 19th century. They were first excavated in 1930, confirming their identification as the remains of the fortress of Archaeopolis mentioned in early Byzantine historical sources, and known as Tsikhegoji or ‘the triple-walled fortress’ by the Georgian chroni- clers. The 40th season of excavation took place in 2015, part of an on-going collaboration between the Anglo-Georgian Expedition to Nokalakevi, established in 2001, and the S. Janashia Museum expedition to Nokalakevi, which started work on the site in 1973. The fortifications en- close a naturally defensible area of approximately 20ha, with a steep limestone river gorge to the north, west and (to a lesser extent) the south, and a hilltop citadel standing more than 200m above the lower town. The site has seen human activity since at least the 8th century BC, with indications of a much earlier presence in the area. This paper seeks to outline the key results of the 40 seasons of excavation, against the backdrop of the shifting political landscape of Georgia. Introduction. In 2015 the multi-period site of Nokalakevi in western Georgia hosted its 40th season of excavation. Situated in Samegrelo (Figure 1), 15km from the modern regional capital of Senaki, the ancient settlement was an important administrative and/ or military centre of Colchis and its successor states from the 8th century BC to the 8th century AD. Most famous today for the standing remains of the early Byzantine period fortress of Archaeopolis, the site would have com- manded an important crossing point of the river Tekhuri (Figures 2 and 3), at the junction with a valuable strategic route that still winds through the neighbouring hills to Chkhorotsqu in central Samegrelo. Nokalakevi-Archaeopolis played a pivotal part in the major wars fought between the Byzantines and Sasanians in the South Caucasus during the sixth century AD. It was one of the key fortresses guarding Lazika (modern west Georgia) from Sasanian Persian and Iberian (East Georgian/ Kartlian) attack, and was part of a complex chain of forts and towers established along the northeastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire [Murgulia 2013; Colvin et al 2014]. During the war of AD 540-562, the Persians’ failure to take Nokalakevi-Archaeopolis from the Byzantines and their Laz allies eventually cost them control of Lazika. Semi-mythical accounts attribute the earliest fortification of the site to the Hellenistic-period, West Georgian ruler Kuji, from whom the site derives the Georgian name, Tsikhegoji (“the fortress of Kuji”). However, the earliest surviving fortifications at Nokalakevi date to the 4th century AD. They were strengthened in the 5th century, and significant additional fortifications were added in the 6th century AD, including a remodelling of defensive works around the eastern gate. The early Byzantine defensive fortifications of Nokalakevi-Archaeopolis are augmented by its topographic position (Figures 2 and 3) next to the river Tekhuri, which, to the west of the fortress, has carved a gorge through the limestone geology. Furthermore, the steep and rugged terrain to the north of the site made the citadel that was situated there largely unassailable. A wall connected this 146 This article has been published by the Georgian National Museum in Iberia-Colchis, available online at http://dspace.nplg.gov.ge/bitstream/1234/242318/1/Iberia_Kolxeti_2017_N13.pdf. Copyright © 2017, Georgian National Museum. ‘upper town’ to the ‘lower’ town below, meaning that a total area of approximately 20ha is con- tained within the fortifications. Occupation appears to have been focussed in the lower town, however, on relatively level ground between the steep slope of the Unagira ridge and the gorge of the Tekhuri (Figure 2 and 3). Excavations in the area of the lower town have revealed substantial stone buildings of the 4th to 6th century AD (Figure 4), including the extant Forty Martyrs’ Church – first built in the 6th century – and two phases of a 5th century church immediately to its south, visible today only as the foundations exposed by archaeological investigation. Immediately south of these foundations lies the ruin of a large stone-built building, interpreted as a palace, constructed around the beginning of the 6th century AD and converted into a wine-cellar in the 16th-17th centuries. A small vaulted, stone gatehouse, or bell-tower, lies approximately 25m east of, and centred on, the first church. The surviving walls along which it is located suggest that it was constructed as the entrance to the earliest ecclesiastical precinct. Other stone structures revealed over many years’ work in the lower town include: the remains of baths along the inside of the southern fortifications; a tunnel down to the river at the south-west of the site; a small bathhouse 35m east of the tunnel, apparently supplied by a cistern constructed up the slope, 50m to its northwest; and a rectangular building near the southeast of the area, which possibly housed the military commanders of the Byzantine and Laz garrison of the 5th/6th century. Excavations have also shed more light on the fortification works. This includes the protruding towers of the first wall, dated to the 4th century AD, made flush in the construction of the second phase in the th5 century, and the 6th century re-modelling that included moving the gate and changing the approach to it so as to prevent a frontal attack. Excavations in the upper town, or citadel, have revealed multi- phase towers at the northwest and northeast of the fortifications, and another small gate and probable guardhouse in the southwest corner (Figure 4). Beneath the early Byzantine period structures and layers of the lower town is evidence of several earlier phases of occupation and abandonment from the 8th to 1st centuries BC, which includes a substantial Hellenistic period (4th to 1st centuries BC) settlement and necropolis. Cur- rent evidence from OSL dating of ceramics indicates a prehistoric origin for settlement at the site, which is hardly surprising given the wealth of resources and easily-defendable character of the topography. Whatever the early origins of settlement at Nokalakevi, by the 8th/7th century BC there was clearly a significant population engaged in complex ritual activity unique to the region. Double-headed zoomorphic figurines (Figure 5) dating to this period have only been found at Nokalakevi and at Vani, 40km to the southeast in Imereti. These finds indicate a unified socio-cultural system that spanned the Colchian plain. The settlement appears to have become more substantial in the Early Antique period (6th/5th centuries BC), continuing to grow in the Hel- lenistic period, before the Laz kings and their Byzantine allies built the mighty fortifications at Nokalakevi that can still be seen today. The Swiss philologist Dubois de Montpéreux (1839), was the first to associate the walls of Nokalakevi with the Byzantine period fortress of Archaeopolis – though he also erroneously con- cluded that it had been built on the ruins of the Colchian city of Aea – and his sketch of the Forty Martyrs’ Church, surrounded by the decaying walls of the lower town (Figure 6), is the earliest known image of the site. Madame Carla Serena was among the western travellers attracted to the ruins, most likely, by Dubois de Montpéreux’s account and her descriptions of the area in 147 This article has been published by the Georgian National Museum in Iberia-Colchis, available online at http://dspace.nplg.gov.ge/bitstream/1234/242318/1/Iberia_Kolxeti_2017_N13.pdf. Copyright © 2017, Georgian National Museum. the mid-1870s are particularly informative. She describes the difficulty of getting to Nokalakevi in the years before she visited, as a result of the marshes by then made passable by a new road from Senaki; and the often fast-flowing Tekhuri river, being bridged at the time of her visit. Hav- ing reached the site she wrote: “As for other quite numerous ruins to be seen inside the present city, they are, it would seem, the remains of houses and churches. At the central point of the hill arises a spacious gateway, the only one that affords entry to the city, the dressed stones of which it is constructed are so massive that you ask yourself how, without the aid of machinery, these gigantic blocks could be transported.” [Serena 2015: 22]. Serena concludes her description by writing, “The thickly wooded mountain, teeming with game, which dominates these ruins is known as Mount Unagira. An excellent lunch, washed down with champagne, was offered to me at the foot of these venerable ruins, the philosophic visions of the past were thus agreeably combined with the legitimate enjoyment of the present moment.” [Serena 2015: 22]. The first archaeological excavations in Nokalakevi took place from the end of November 1930 to the end of January 1931, and were funded by the Emergency Association of German Science (Der Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft) in collaboration with the National Education Commission for the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Museum of Georgia in Tbilisi [Kirchhoff 2003: 338]. The museum had been founded, in 1852, as the Museum of the Caucasian Department of the Geographic Society. It became the Caucasian Museum in 1865 and then, in 1919, during Georgia’s three year independence between the overthrow of Tsarist rule and the Soviet occupation, the Museum of Georgia.

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